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No More Guessing! An Enlightened Approach to Performance Troubleshooting with MVP Adam Machanic

Scratching your head, you stare at the screen. Should you rebuild an index? Create a new one? Reboot the server? Why is this query so slow?!? Figuring out performance problems can sometimes feel like fumbling your way through a dark room. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find the right solution―or maybe you’ll stub your toe. Either way, it’s a slow, potentially painful process. Yet finding the root cause of most performance issues is a simple exercise, once you understand where to look and when. In this full day seminar, you will learn a proven methodology that can be used to approach virtually any performance problem. Created and refined by Adam Machanic over several years, this strategy leverages core SQL Server performance tools (including dynamic management views, Extended Events, and WMI counters), applying them to various performance troubleshooting techniques (such as waits and queues analysis, baselining, and real-time activity monitoring). Each of these tools and techniques has a unique role, and you will learn to use them cooperatively to quickly and adaptively find the actual cause of performance issues. All of this will be illustrated through complete demonstrations that will teach you how to drill from high-level problem detection all the way to specific spot in a query plan or deeper―pinpointing the exact problem and helping you to quickly solve it. Attend this seminar to take full control of your databases—and never again stumble blindly through the dimly lit world of performance troubleshooting.

Module 1: Baselining Methodology 

1. What is a baseline, and why should you care?
2. How do you create meaningful benchmarks?
3. How should you collect baseline data?
4. What kinds of testing should be done?

Module 2: Performance Counters 

1. Which counters, specifically, should you look at?
2. What, exactly, do all of these counters actually indicate?
3. How should you analyze counter data?
4. How should you not analyze counter data?

Module 3: Waits and Queues 

1. What is a wait? What is a queue? Why should you care?
2. How do you collect the waits data that SQL Server exposes?
3. How do you baseline wait stat information?
4. What are the most important wait stats to pay attention to, and what do they actually indicate?

Module 4: Real-Time Activity DMVs 

1. How do you get more pointed and in-depth information about what’s happening in your SQL Server instance?
2. Why are there so many DMVs? Which ones are actually important to understand?
3. How do you baseline some of the data from the DMVs?
4. What information will help you solve real problems, in your real SQL Server instances, when those problems are actually occurring?

Module 5: Query Plan Analysis 

1. What are the top 5 things that you can quickly look for to identify problems with query plans?
2. How can you understand when and why plan regressions occur?

Adam Machanic is a Boston-based independent database consultant, writer, and speaker. He has been involved in dozens of SQL Server implementations for both high-availability OLTP and large-scale data warehouse applications, and has optimized data access layer performance for several data-intensive applications. Adam has written for numerous web sites and magazines, including SQLblog, Simple Talk, Search SQL Server, SQL Server Professional, CoDe, and VSJ. He has also contributed to several books on SQL Server, including "SQL Server 2008 Internals" (Microsoft Press, 2009) and "Expert SQL Server 2005 Development" (Apress, 2007). Adam regularly speaks at user groups, community events, and conferences on a variety of SQL Server and .NET-related topics. He is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for SQL Server, Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), and a former member of the INETA North American Speakers Bureau.